From hacking gameboy games to creating new art, Samsy has found success on NFT platforms like SuperRare with his top art selling for 3 Eth. We love his style and were lucky to sit down with him to learn more about what drew him to the NFT Space.
Samsy, thanks for agreeing to this NFT interview. Please tell us a bit more about yourself
My name is Samuel Honigstein but a lot of my tech-friends, students, people on internet call me Samsy.
My projects are influenced by everything and every lovely person I meet, from Gobelins school to university classmates, Google Creative Lab, artist friends and makers. They’re all inspiration for my work and have helped me to develop my signature technique throughout the years.
I started working in digital 6 years ago. During that time, I’ve been fortunate enough to earn some recognition from the digital community as both an independent creative technologist, and as part of a team. Technical Director & Creative Coder, I help people to understand the technical and graphical challenges that might one day influence the very fabric of the web, and make things that help creatives answer their questions; mostly 3D interactive graphics, VR prototypes, computational code and visual arts. This kind of work can take many forms, I’ve been involved in various projects including huge 3D music festivals, augmented reality exhibitions, virtual reality documentaries, VJ-ing.
Where are you from?
Born and raised in the suburb of Paris, currently living in the 93 Department for people who knows ! I’ve also been living in UK for 5 years before the pandemic.
What made you ultimately pursue Art as a medium?
I’ve been a lot into Street arts ( Light Painting Photography, Graff-ing, beat-making ) field when I was younger, and a lot of my friends were already intro things like music, graphic design and film-making, I guess that helps to give you strength to undertake and believe in an artistic career. I studied to be a designer, but not relying on people skills was a pretty good reason to start coding 3D graphics by myself to develop my own ideas, then discovered CGI as an expression. Generative artworks are fascinating, they just pop out as a result of Math, Physics, Shading and a bit of brain.
Awesome! What made you pursue NFT art?
The cryptosphere is very fascinating, it gives a voice to small artists.
But also I was astonished by the kindness of the people in the community in general, that was what I was looking for : Bringing pieces to the NFT culture to raise the crypto community to a higher level thanks to Collectors and creators ! It gives more context, and writing history of the early ages of crypto. That sounds mythic !
Who is your favorite artists (Non NFT)?
Rafael Araujo got nothing to do with Digital art, he is an architect and technical drawing artist with a lot of beauty and poetry. He creates his works on canvas with, a ruler, compass, squares, indian ink and acrylic paint, the “Old way”. His work is really mesmerizing.
If you could travel anywhere in the world where would you go?
I’d probably go back to Japan, I’ve been there once before, but probably the craziest country I’ve ever visited. I’m a super fan of retro-gaming, neon, cyberpunk city, Ghost in the Shell like, and big cities in Japan are probably the one that are the more similar. Begging for a small rain on a night view around Shibuya District in Tokyo or Dotonbori Area in Osaka.
What are your other passions besides art?
Always on the hunt for small artist music gems, I can spend hours fetching / crawling the internet for the nice piece of music. I strongly recommend to listening to Elaquent. Also, I am collecting pokemonjapanese cards, and playing a LOT of retro games ( mainly tr-ing to find back all the games I played when I was a kid, that brings a lot of memories ).
Do you make other forms of art?
I’m crafting / hacking GameBoy games, putting art in those retro devices. Every artwork I’m releasing is associated with a 8-bit GameBoy version of it. I’ve always been very geeky and a lot into props / games that made me love my early 90’s year.
CryptoApes – The hypest apes in the universe – on Foundation.
How did you come up with your specific style?
I’ve had something for generative systems, computational applications, parameterization, performances, and simulations.
I’d define Coding as a kind of super-power that turns any weird dreams into an interactive mode. It came from real time low-fi web-coded generative artworks into more CGI artwork today. My nostalgia for retro-gaming and especially GameBoy made me learn and experiment a lot with very low-fi technology.
Derivative Simulation Super Serie 7 – on SuperRare
What was your greatest failure and what did you learn from it?
Impatience in general was my greatest failure. It applies in every field, professional work, art, social. Everything should happen at the right time and the right moment. Don’t think too quick !
How has your style evolved over the years?
I started to build artworks only made from code. That was my first medium of expression, building interactive pieces, lights, blooms, lines, particles, designing noise and movement in pair with my commercial works. to a slightly more figurative CGI style but still keeping in mind my abstract fascination. I was too afraid to make retro-art until recently, a lot of people tried to keep me out of it, but I’m very proud now to build retro-games with my artworks.
I’d like people to get their hands on some GameBoy cartridges and remember the feeling / Retro Nostalgia and the love toward those things when were kids playing those games.
Every single artwork I’m producing are coming with a working GameBoy 8-bit version I’ll ship to the owner.
If you could collaborate with one artist who would it be?
Fernando Magalhaes is not only my friend, but is also one amongst the people I admire the most in the whole art sphere. His mecha-serie GNSS is organic, generative, fabulous. That would be such an honor !
Where can collectors learn more abut your art?
https://superrare.co/samsy
https://foundation.app/samsy
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